Gallup: No One Is Winning The Digital Wallet War
By Christine Kern, contributing writer
Recent polls by Gallup have demonstrated while there is a lot of hype about digital wallets, consumers are not racing to adopt them, and no one is winning the digital wallet war. In fact, the latest survey found “strong awareness but little adoption” of Apply Pay by consumers.
According to Gallup analysis, despite the heavy marketing campaigns to promote Apple Pay, while 65 percent of consumers reported being at least “somewhat familiar” with Apple Pay, only 21 percent of iPhone customers actually utilize the Passbook App, and iPhone represents just 48 percent of the total smartphone market. Only 6 percent of those surveyed said that they were likely to start using Apple Pay in the next year.
The survey results go beyond a reluctance to “go Apple,” however; since Gallup’s analysis revealed that most customers are still not sold on digital wallets.
The survey also found that Apple has the highest usage (32 percent) among top digital wallet providers, and awareness of Apple Pay spiked to 78 percent among current digital wallet users and 89 percent among current Apple Passbook users.
On the other hand, the survey found that the Apple Pay feature is not enough incentive to drive consumers to purchase or switch to an iPhone. In fact, the survey found, “a greater percentage of consumers say the availability of Apple Pay makes them less likely to buy an iPhone, compared with those who say it makes them more likely.”
Meanwhile, Apple’s digital wallet far exceeds its competitors when it comes to customer engagement and usage, with Apple holding the highest percentage of fully engaged users at 37 percent and the lowest percentage of actively disengaged customers at 14 percent. While Google Wallet has been around longer, it has more actively engaged customers (32 percent) than Apple Pay or Pay Pal (19 percent). Meanwhile, Google Wallet has 30 percent fully engaged customers, while PayPal has 25 percent.
But Gallup analysis demonstrated that enthusiasm for digital wallets is still low. Only 13 percent of U.S. adults with a smartphone have a digital wallet on their device, and 76 percent of those who have a digital wallet have never used it or have almost never used it to make a purchase from a retailer in the past 30 days.